Racial Makeup at Issue in S.C. Charter Debate

The road South Carolina's first charter school has traveled has
been a rocky one. And that path points up sticky issues of race
that may surface in other states with charter schools.

The Beaufort County school board last month rejected the Lighthouse
Charter School's application largely out of concern that the
school--set to open on affluent, predominantly white Hilton Head
Island--would become a white enclave in a district split almost 50-50
between blacks and whites.

This month, however, the state school board reversed the local
district's decision and approved the Lighthouse charter. Meanwhile,
Beaufort County school officials are considering challenging the school
in court, and South Carolina's attorney general has deemed
discriminatory a provision of the state's charter school law that
mandates specific racial balance in charter schools.

While many states' charter laws include provisions aimed at
encouraging racial diversity, South Carolina's is one of the nation's
most prescriptive, experts say. It says charter school enrollment
cannot differ from the racial composition of the local school district
by more than 10 percent.

The issue of racial balance in schools is always sensitive. For
charter schools, designed to operate with less government regulation
than other public schools, it resurrects questions of where and how to
draw lines. Many charter school critics have argued that such schools
will contribute to the resegregation of public schools, while
proponents say enrollment figures to date show that charters schools as
a whole are racially diverse.

"Everyone who doesn't like charter schools uses this [issue] as a
lightning rod," said Eric Premack, the director of the charter school
project at the Institute for Education Reform at California State
University-Sacramento.

"There are some legitimate concerns," he said. "Depending on how the
law is written and implemented, it can be used as a segregationist
tool. But the track record to date is very, very strong and
positive."

But charter school proponents say that the racial issue is a
smokescreen in the Lighthouse case and that district officials rejected
the charter proposal because they fear competition and a potential
drain on the district budget.

"They don't want us. We're competition," said Jacqueline Rosswurm,
one of eight members of the Lighthouse charter committee, all of whom
are white. "It's like Avis going to Hertz and saying: 'Will you charter
us?'"

Equity, Fiscal Concerns

Charter schools are independent, state-funded public schools run by
parents, teachers, or others free of many regulatory constraints that
guide regular school districts.

Since 1970, the 15,000-student Beaufort County, S.C., district, like
many in the South, has operated under a desegregation pact with the
U.S. Department of Justice, said district spokesman John C.
Williams.

"We have worked long and hard to rid our school system of those
types of racial concerns," Mr. Williams said. "And now we have a school
that is threatening to change all that."

Beaufort County officials say that they support charter schools, but
that the Lighthouse applicants presented no evidence of efforts to
recruit minority students. Under South Carolina's 1996 charter law, the
Hilton Head school would have to be at least 40 percent minority; most
schools on the island are only 30 percent minority.

While the racial issue was key in the local school board's decision
to reject Lighthouse, Mr. Williams acknowledged that officials had
other concerns. Since Lighthouse did not present any student lists, the
district could not be sure a new 400-student, K-8 charter school
wouldn't draw many students currently outside the district in private
schools and home-schooling--new students the district hadn't planned on
paying for.

In their application, Lighthouse organizers pledged to promote the
school to minorities through churches, workplaces, civic organizations,
and community groups--meetings Ms. Rosswurm said were starting last
week led by a racially mixed recruitment task force. She called the
district's request for enrollment lists unreasonable since the school
has not yet been established.

"We're actively pursuing a racial composition that will be similar
to the district's, and that's been the feeling since the day we
started," she said. "Though they say they're not against charter
schools, I haven't seen anything that indicates that the district
supports them."

Defining Diversity

For its part, the 17-member state board will not comment on why it
voted unanimously April 9 to reverse the Beaufort County district's
decision until the board files a written ruling later this month, said
Jim Foster, a state education department spokesman.

"They said they wanted it made very clear that the racial balance is
of 'paramount importance,'" Mr. Foster said.

On April 7, in response to a legislator's query, Attorney General
Charles M. Condon, a Republican, issued a nonbinding opinion that the
racial-balance provision in South Carolina's charter school law is
illegally discriminatory on the basis of race. Black lawmakers had
championed the provision. While the measure still stands until it is
challenged in court or changed by the legislature, some observers say
other states may undergo similar scrutiny.

"This is already part of the debate in states and will continue to
be," said Alex Medler, a policy analyst with the Denver-based Education
Commission of the States. He noted that charter schools that serve
mostly black, Hispanic, or American Indian students already exist.

"If communities of color are creating schools to serve their kids,
is that OK? And if affluent white communities are opening schools that
serve primarily white kids," he said, "is that different than what the
traditional public schools are doing in the area--and even if it's not
different, is it OK? The local politics will have to determine whether
that's acceptable or not.

"But I wouldn't put all the focus in terms of race relations in
public education on charters."

Point
Five of President Clinton's 10-point plan for education outlines
his goals for expanding school choice and charter schools.

Charter School Research. A public
"space" dedicated to charter schools. Its goal is to provide a
comprehensive catalog of charter school-related materials on the Net
and "to cross as many boundaries as possible while enabling inquiry,
communication, critique, and justifiable experimentation." Hosted by
AskERIC.